Ground Control Touring

Merchandise

Merchandise have announced details of their new album, A Corpse Wired For Sound, due for release on September 23rd, alongside the video for a second new track, ‘End Of The Week’. Formed nearly a decade ago, galvanized by Tampa hardcore and inspired by its miscreant noise, A Corpse Wired For Sound signals a new chapter for Merchandise.

Following 2014’s After The End — a full-band effort recorded in a closet — the band stripped back to its core of Carson Cox (vocals, electronics), Dave Vassalotti (guitar, electronics) and Pat Brady (bass). The trio travelled to Rosà, Italy for their first ever sessions in a recording studio, La Distilleria, with a local, Maurizio Baggio. The nine-song nocturnal A Corpse Wired For Sound was recorded half in the studio and half at home, in Tampa as well as Cox’s newly adopted bases of New York and Berlin – the culmination of a long-distance collaboration between Cox and Vassalotti.

The album’s metallic title is inspired by a science fiction short story by JG Ballard, but equally sums up the band’s current state of mind. “We were ‘reborn’ as a rock band for After The End,” says Vassalotti, “and then we straight-up died again. It couldn’t last. The result is this distended corpse responding to you from
both sides of the Atlantic, forever singing in spite of everything.” Cox continues further “It’s about the truth of growing up. You can’t take your friends or lovers with you. It’s about finding peace with that loneliness.”

The second song to be aired from A Corpse Wired For Sound, ‘End Of The Week’ is “really about personal reflection and horror,” says Cox, who is responsible for the song’s visuals (he also created the video for lead single ‘Flower Of Sex’). The video is a subliminal homage to Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni and his motion pictures Blow Up and Zabriskie Point. “The smashed mirror isn’t just a symbol of death,” Cox continues. “It’s the broken image of humanity reflecting back at everyone when they read the news. Reality is an unbearable pill to swallow this year. Somehow the evil people that make up society can still wake up everyday and look at themselves in the mirror.”

A Corpse Wired For Sound will be released digitally and on CD and vinyl on September 23rd via